You can make pie, and you should

Berry season is upon us, and I would be remiss if I didn’t weigh in with my annual nag about making pie. It’s not that hard and is well worth the investment of both the time and the minimal effort required. Your dinner guests will be agog at your skill, your family will weep tears of delirious gratitude and you will have in hand a ready refutation of those ridiculous charges of being a do-nothing, layabout dipsomaniac who’d rather open a bottle of wine for lunch than rustle up a decent meal for the family. I speak purely from anecdotal evidence, of course. Anyways, here’s your basic pie primer. Now go get some strawberries and rhubarb and have at it.

As mentioned, I feel strongly about pie for cultural reasons. If you can’t make it, find a decent bakery where you can buy one. To my way of thinking there aren’t many. Usually a manufactured crust (the kind you see in the freezer at the grocery store) is a dead giveaway that the product will suck. So is a big blocky rim on the pie or anything that looks like this.

As I’ve said, making pie crust from a mix is not hard. You just follow the directions on the box and fill the damn thing with fruit, sugar, flour and butter and shove it in the oven. But a few tricks are worth pointing out:

You can mix the dough with a fork. If I’m feeling particularly lazy, and I usually am, I use the electric mixer (for me, the Kitchenaid stand mixer is a gift from God)…

Just trundle out and get your bad self a Betty Crocker pie crust mix, some fruit and have at it. And here’s a hot tip: The only thing better than strawberry rhubarb is blueberry rhubarb. Once you try it, you’ll never go back to plain old blueberry again.

Ooh lucky you! If you’re stopping in Venice, do not miss Osteria Dai Zemei near the Rialto Bridge for cicchetti and a spritz.
As for the saskatoon berries, I thought you were pulling my leg, so I looked ’em up. Sounds like they’re broadly similar to wild Maine blueberries. Blueberry rhubarb is my absolute favorite pie.
Buon viaggio!

I will be in Venice, right by the Rialto bridge. Going to see La Traviata at Le Fenice. Will check out Osteria, Thanks for the tip.
The Saskatoon berries are like a cross between a blueberry and a date or maybe a fig. Delicious but hard to find. My aunt is my supplier when she goes berry picking.

Enjoy your trip. You are in for a treat. If you go on to Florence, make sure to try the ribollita. It’s a bean soup that makes a very fine meal, especially when followed with vin santo and biscotti. I am green with envy.

Eat well. Drink more. Work less.

I stick my finger in the vinaigrette to check the taste, add more vinegar, then stick the same finger in again. Sometimes I use a lettuce leaf, but not usually. You know you do it, too.

I make cakes from scratch but almost never use more than one bowl. That business about blending wet and dry ingredients separately is bullshit. One cake, one bowl. Why wash two? I have my suspicions about the role of Big Dish Soap in this.

I believe you can eat well with a lot less effort than you think, and if you drink more than is generally considered advisable while doing it, that's strictly between you and Mssrs Moet and Chandon.

I believe that the extra pain, suffering and time it takes to do any household task well is wasted once you get to well enough.

I believe you might as well be drunk if you're going to vacuum, and you should be if you're going to clean the toilet.

If you're interested, I've got opinions on just about everything else.

I am a kitchen slattern, and if you hang around here long enough you might be, too.

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